Stardock announces flexible DRM system, Goo

DRM is a difficult subject for any publisher or developer to broach, but GDC this year has seen a number of developers announce new anti-piracy solutions for the PC market, such as Valve's CEG system yesterday. New today is Stardock's attempt at digital rights management, dubbed Goo.

Short for Game Object Obfuscation, Goo is a new client-free DRM solution that Stardock hopes could make the PC a much more viable PC gaming market in the eyes of sceptical publishers.

Eschewing the usual system of third-party verification systems, Goo is a DRM system that's built directly into each copy of the game and which is activated directly by the user. Upon buying the game customers link the game to an email address using the unique serial number. After that the game can be installed and played on as many PCs as you want and no further online validation is required.

What makes Goo so interesting though is that players can still sell games on if they want by choosing to de-couple the game from the email address and transferring the ownership to someone else. Enabling second hand sales in this way makes it more difficult for retail stores to profit without publishers, but actually makes it easier for players to sell their games on directly. As Joystiq points out, were Goo to become successful then it could actually create an entirely new type of market for second hand PC game sales.

Stardock is hoping that Goo should serve to complement the existing Impulse digital distribution platform and will be launching the system alongside Impulse Reactor, the new virtual platform library, on April 7th.

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